Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Harm that Intellectuals Do

By Alan
Caruba

I have a
university degree. I read a lot of books. I write about often complex topics,
but I am not an “intellectual”.That’s
because I live in the real world and I am inordinately fond of facts over theories.
For example, I actually believe the Constitution means what it says.

Our
Presidents were educated men and a lot of them came from the ranks of the
military where the reality of the battlefield taught them about the need to
either avoid war or embrace it as the only solution to a threat. From Truman
until Clinton our Presidents have served in the armed forces. Bush41 and 43
both served. Clinton did not. Barack Obama did not.

Many of the
problems afflicting the nation were the result of “intellectuals” in the Oval
Office and those former times were most especially affected by Woodrow Wilson,
the ultimate intellectual who served as president of Princeton University from
1902 to 1910.

I was
reminded of Wilson while reading an excellent new book by Larry Schweikart and
Dave Dougherty, “A Patriot’s History of the Modern World: From America’s
Exceptional Ascent to the Atomic Bomb – 1898-1945.”

“Wilson and
his progressive allies had no scruples about reinterpreting the Constitution
for their own devices, and recognized no limitations on government
(particularly executive) authority.” Who does that remind you of?

Like most
progressives—liberals—Wilson believed that the Constitution was a “living
thing” that should be adjusted to changing times. The Founders had included an
amendment process for that, but wisely made amending the Constitution a
difficult process to avoid changing fads and fancies such as Prohibition. In
sum, the Constitution is all about limitations and all about making the
legislative process a process that required a lot of debate, dividing it
between Congress and the President with oversight by the Supreme Court.

Wilson
believed that Americans must abandon their “blind devotion” to the Constitution
and he was very wrong despite his academic credentials. Quoting Jonah Goldberg,
“Wilson, was the first president to speak disparagingly of the Constitution”,
mocking ”Fourth of July sentiments” Liberty, Wilson thought, had “different
meanings in different epochs.” No, it doesn’t.

Wilson, like
Obama, “had no regard for the opinions of others” and thought “men are as clay”
to be molded to the policies of a leader.” That’s not how it works in America.
Those in public office work for us.

Not
surprisingly, Wilson admired Germany’s Otto von Bismark who believed that
government should determine the actions of citizens, not the other way around.
Wilson called his creation an “admirable system…the most studied and most
perfected in the world.” Not surprisingly, Wilson staffed his agencies with
economists trained in German universities. And Wilson, who campaigned under the
banner “He kept us out of the war”, would lead the U.S. into World War I,
relishing the notion “that war would force Americans to ‘give up much of our
economic freedom…we shall have to lay by our good-natured individualism and
march in step.”

It was during
Wilson’s tenure that the U.S. passed the 1916 Revenue Act that introduced
income taxes. American supported it only because they believed the rates would
be low and that many, they were told, would be exempt from them. During the war
Wilson’s Treasury Department raised taxes again in 1918, “this time to an
astonishing top rate of 77 percent.” If this reminds you have Obama’s constant
hectoring of “millionaires and billionaires”—already paying some sixty percent
of tax revenues—you would be right.

“Redistribution
of wealth”, the authors wrote, “constituted one of the three Progressive planks
that the reform of war could provide, heavy regulation of business and massive
centralized planning being the other two. War gave the Progressives the excuse
they needed to remake the American economy.”

If this
history reminds you of Obama’s stated intent to “transform” America, you’re
right. America does not need transforming. It is in great need of the reform of
many of the agencies and policies that Wilson and other
Progressives—liberals—have introduced since his time in office, 1913 to 1921.
Other programs introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman now devour half
of the entire U.S. budget and are facing collapse without reform.

Recall, too,
that the last century was a bloody slaughter of millions in wars and by the
introduction of communism, an intellectual theory of wealth redistribution. The
last century’s intellectuals introduced the theory of eugenics that advocated
killing the unborn and various other groups deemed “life that is unfit for
life.” It started well before the Nazi Holocaust and was popular in both Europe
and less so in America.

President
Obama selected a number of intellectuals for his cabinet and for his many
czars. All have displayed an indifference to the Constitution, to the limits on
the federal government, and the ultimate welfare of the nation as they pursued
various environmental, energy, and other “theories.”

The November
elections provided an opportunity to elect men and women who would have undone
the damage done by Progressives, but a majority of voters did not grasp what
was and is being done to the nation. We must not continue down the path of
liberalism that has led to 23 million Americans being out of work and more to
come as companies react to the penalties of Obamacare and an anemic economy.

As the
Heritage Foundation recently noted, “Roughly 100 million people—one-third of
the U.S. population—receive aid from at least one means-tested welfare program
each month. Average benefits come to around $9,000 per recipient. If converted
to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount
needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.”

Jobs are the best
remedy for poverty. The result of the election says that Liberals prefer to
keep a third of all Americans on the dole. That is unsustainable and the path
to collapse.

'That’s because I live in the real world and I am inordinately fond of facts over theories.'As a scientist I know of no way to separate facts and theories. They are one and the same thing. You use facts to generate theories and to prove them and you use theories to explain the facts. There is a reason why both inductive and deductive logic are necessary for human progress. But of course, liberals and conservatives can’t understand this; they can conceive of only one side of the logic coin. Without facts, theories are arbitrary constructs; without theories, facts are meaningless.

"That is unsustainable and the path to collapse." - Yes that may be true, but it's a sure-fired way of ensuring you have continuous voters.

I watched this video last last night. It explains Marxism and how they so believe in it that they will implement it at all costs - even though it's failed time and again. A lot of their strategies were seen during this election. And then people still ask why we think Obama is a Marxist/Socialist/Communist!

The late President Wilson (DEMOCRAT) is a perfect example of a psuedo (false) intellectual who were denounced by Ayn Rand as being a devotee of Plato's REPUBLIC of mysticism, racism and the tyranny of the self selected "Philosopher Kings."

In contrast, you are the perfect example of the true intellectual who is firmly grounded in the philosophy of Aristotle and a person devoted to individual liberty reality, facts, logic and reason.

@ Unknown 7:38PMWhile you are right that facts and theories are integrated parts of thinking, the point you are missing is that from t Left they generate a theory and act upon it. When the results of that action (facts) are then tabulated and show the theory to be wrong, rather than re-evaluate the theory, the Left decides the problem wasn't in their theory, but that their actions were not enough to prove theory.The politics/policies of the Left are based on intentions, not actual results. As long as their core intent is moral and correct (in their viewpoint), the actual results are irrelevent.

@Unknown: One contrary fact can disprove a theory; no amount of theory can "disprove" a fact. Any sane person knows the difference between fact and theory; one is unarguable, the other always open to falsification or amendment. They are NOT the same, and a fact is never meaningless (!), quite the contrary. As a competent scientist, I disavow you as a fellow scientist, and Alan is quite foolish to say you are correct. Your words represent the worst in science now, a false relativism that will not even distinguish fact from theory. I bet you are one of the many who get cause and effect reversed, too, as climate scientists do.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.